specific question from little green book

I was reading pg 221 and it talks about how many times you will be dealt pocket aces in a tournament ... theres a chart that talks about how your survival rate goes down every time you have pocket aces and some one has kings .... isnt each encounter independent from one another .... very confused ... anyone who has read the book ... please help me out .. thank you

i'll try to look it up tonight.

[HtotheNootch]

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I was reading pg 221 and it talks about how many times you will be dealt pocket aces in a tournament ... theres a chart that talks about how your survival rate goes down every time you have pocket aces and some one has kings .... isnt each encounter independent from one another .... very confused ... anyone who has read the book ... please help me out .. thank you

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It's basically about how if you have 10 of those confrontations, your chances of surviving all of them aren't that great.

[benfranklin]

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theres a chart that talks about how your survival rate goes down every time you have pocket aces and some one has kings .... isnt each encounter independent from one another

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Each trial is individually independent, but if even if you have the edge, the more times you play a given situation, the more likely you are to bust out.

AA beats KK about 80% of the time. If you go all in with a 80/20 edge, you will bust out 20% of the time. If you go all in twice with a 80/20 edge each time, you will bust out 36% of the time. Three times, you are down to about 50%.

What are the odds of flipping a coin and getting heads twice? Heads is 50% the first flip, so half the time you are out on the first flip. If you flip a head the 1st time, the second flip will be a tail 50% of the time. So you flip 2 heads 25% of the time, even though each flip is independently a 50/50 shot.

someone can check me on this, but the probability equation looks like

p{KK busts AA starting pre-flop} = 20% or 1/5

p{KK busts AA at least once in 10 events} = 1 - (1-(1/5))^10 = 89%

I think that's the right math assuming all in preflop and everything taken to the river.

[housenuts]

the fact is if you win your first couple of them you'll have a monster stack so it won't matter if you lose the 6th one or whatever.

[Hallett]

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the fact is if you win your first couple of them you'll have a monster stack so it won't matter if you lose the 6th one or whatever.

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Actually, this is exactly what I was thinking when I read this section in the book. I think it is important. Yes, you won't win them all, and that point is well taken, and important to understand. In reality however, you would keep on taking the bet, as you would win so many chips that the occaisional loss would be bordering on irrelevant.

[benfranklin]

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the fact is if you win your first couple of them you'll have a monster stack so it won't matter if you lose the 6th one or whatever.

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He is assuming in all cases that his stack is covered. His point is that even with an 80/20 edge, with enough repetitions, the math quickly catches up with you. Even with an 80/20 edge, you are the dog with 4 or more all-in bets.

His bigger point here is that given enough trials, no matter what your edge on a single hand, in the aggregate a bad beat is not only possible but highly probable.

Note: the OP cited this text at p.221. In fact, the discussion begins on p. 172.

On page 183 there's a chart of pre-flop match-ups.

One of them is "Best (AA) vs. Worst (72) 89% vs. 11%.

You could compare this to a game in which you throw a die. If you throw 1-5, you win; 6, your opponent wins, and you go double or nothing on the bet after each throw. The game ends when you have nothing. After 6 throws, the game "probably" will have ended.

[Beavis68]

I think his point is, that even if you play great, your odds of making it far into the tournament aren't that great.

He used this as an example of why he wouldn't fold AA early in a tournament (on his book tour stop in AZ). Not sure it illustrates his point most clearly though.